I still use CDs where possible, as I have over 600 games installed(!) and many I only use briefly for screenshot comparisons, so I think the CDs are useful in keeping my hard disk free from files I won't use very often!

Anyone else you doesn't have luck with playing CD Audio tracks in Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120%?

I might have a workaround and need some testers please.

EDIT:

This is what worked for me on a Slot 1 Pentium III with Matrox G550 and Vortex 2 PCI card as well as Netgear PCI NIC.

- I installed Windows 98
- Installed chipset drivers
- Installed graphics drivers
- Installed sound drivers
- Device manager > Moved DVD drive to letter O:
- Installed Installer 2.0 (Daemon Tools 3.47 needs that)
- Installed Daemon Tools 3.47
- Mounted various BIN/CUE games > confirmed that CD Audio tracks don't play (HDD activity shows streaming going on, but no sounds)
- At this point I haven't installed DirectX!

To get Audio CD tracks playing in OpenGL games, such as Quake or Quake II, I ran DXDIAG > select audio tab > move acceleration slider all the way to the left, then press the "test audio button" and complete all tests.

At this point, GLQuake and Quake II played the Audio CD tracks.

Now to play D3D games I installed DirectX7. This broke Audio CD playback again 🙁

To get it working again I did:

- Downloaded that Unoffical SP3
- Installed the core updates > reboot
- Installed DX9.0c > reboot

After this you can do the same workaround with DXDIAG as above and now Audio CD tracks play in OpenGL and D3D games. I tested GLQuake, Quake II and Incoming.

The Vortex drivers are the recommended 2041 drivers (VXD).

I am still not 100% confident about this workaround, and some steps might not be necessary. For example I didn't try just installing DX9 (it actually didn't work for me without the core updates) and I didn't try DX8 for example.

Also, before I figured all that out, I did try various sound cards:

VXD drivers: Audican 32 Plus with Yamaha chipset, Vortex 2 and Sound Blaster 16
WDM drivers: Creative SB PCI (Audio PCI) and Audigy LS

None of them worked. So I don't think VXD / WDM drivers are the root cause. I think it's more a communication issue between Daemon Tools and the OS, which might require DX9 files or files from the core update files?

Anyway, hopefully others could give this a shot if you have the time 😁

I don't see why your sound card or drivers would matter when it comes to playing CD Audio from Daemon Tools. This is emulated CD Audio, there is no actual CD-ROM drive that is connected to the sound card, it just makes your OS think there is one. As long as you have normal sound working in Windows, it should work fine.

About DirectX, i use the latest official version for Windows 98 which is 9.0a and i installed it before Daemon Tools along with all the drivers. Also as far as i know, DirectX is backwards compatible, so i don't know why you would use older versions 😁 Here's a quote from Wikipedia on the subject.

Prior to DirectX 10, DirectX runtime was designed to be backward compatible with older drivers, meaning that newer versions of the APIs were designed to interoperate with older drivers written against a previous version's DDI.

Always easy to say stuff in hindsight. Threads about this going back many years with no clear answer why it works for some and not for others.

CDs are noisy, slow and not terribly reliable. However, much like vinyl, there's a certain charm in grabbing the box off the shelf, opening it up to pick up the disc case, appreciating the disc art (if any) and then finally inserting the CD in the drive. Each company would also use their own installers usually with some promotional material being shown or maybe some pre-rendered images done as concept art for the game you're about to play.
I also really enjoyed swapping discs when finishing chapters in games, granted the OS and/or game didn't crap out and decide not to detect the next CD. With games such as the Pandora Directive though, I'd never play them without my trusty, home-made DVD version 🤣 .

What I usually do is go through the... ritual I described above at least once and then image the CD on the hard-drive.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

To get Audio CD tracks playing in OpenGL games, such as Quake or Quake II, I ran DXDIAG > select audio tab > move acceleration slider all the way to the left, then press the "test audio button" and complete all tests.

-wavonly says hi

F2bnp wrote:

CDs are noisy, slow and not terribly reliable. However, much like vinyl, there's a certain charm in grabbing the box off the shelf, opening it up to pick up the disc case, appreciating the disc art (if any) and then finally inserting the CD in the drive. Each company would also use their own installers usually with some promotional material being shown or maybe some pre-rendered images done as concept art for the game you're about to play.

While I don't have game boxes to admire, I totally get the point about the installer and images that are shown during installation. That's an issue, at least when mounting a local image on a fast machine, they just zip past 🤣

Mounting over Ethernet slows it down a bit. Still faster than from the CD drive though.

Since you guys are debating about virtual cd áudio.
I'm running daemon tools with Windows 98SE, and I wanted to play the cd áudio from tomb raider 1, is there a way?
I also have the same game in cd format, but for me it's the same thing, my cdrom drive is missing the áudio cd cable '-'

Also, for those that leave in dos only world, If I remember right, there was a daemon tools like for dos only, unfortunately I never figure out how to make it work 😖

Do Windows games play back CD audio tracks? If not, could you give the steps I postes above a go?

Yes, the only problem for now is that I'm not with my 110v to 220v transformer (I have a 220v only german psu here ;--; )
When I take my hands back on my transformer I'll give it a try

Absolutely bin+cue, mds/mdf or ccd images. I'm a paranoid freak, so basically I fear my original discs will deteriorate and scratch with use. Every time I buy a vintage title on cd/dvd, I dump it as soon as I get it.

No problem mounting and using cd images with redbook audio here.

I burn an image on cd-r only when I use legacy win98 pc.

I've only tested few games like Quake II and Half-Life and they don't play any red book music at all using disc images (I also tried converting to different image formats). Tried DirectX9.0c and those core files but still no music. Yesterday I installed Quake 1 from the disc and started it today without the disc just to see if it works. It actually works and plays the music from the Quake II image that I had left mounted in DT 3.47!

...OK it seems that I have to start GlQuake to get the music not the regular Quake.
I went through some old reviews and looks like you could play with your own CD music with Quake. Still doesn't explain at which point this generally fails.

Seems touch and go.

NT and up supported digital audio over the IDE bus and no CD audio cable was needed. The audio cable is probably always needed for DOS games because there is no emulator for dos afaik.

I'll just have to use my real discs.

Api wrote:

I've only tested few games like Quake II and Half-Life and they don't play any red book music at all using disc images (I also tried converting to different image formats).

Doesn't matter if you converted it to other formats, original format was probably wrong (iso). Iso doesn't support redbook, you need to use bin+cue, mds/mdf or ccd to properly dump data+audio cds...and use decent virtual cd programs like alcohol 52% or daemon tools to mount the image. Another important element: the vast majority of windows games only play redbook audio if your cdrom drive letter is the first one after those used by harddrive(s).

Your last point is often critical. Re-letter your physical CDR so it comes *after* the virtual drive to avoid this common issue.

Only thing I've learned is that Quake II doesn't even play music from the disc if the physical drive isn't D:\, other than that there's nothing that drive letters would fix. Daemon Tools as D:\ is as silent as allways. Windows CD player will play any mounted image.

Edit:
Windows 98SE + Virtual CD Software + CD Audio
From that thread I got the idea to exit the game (Windows key) and the music starts playing immediately! Activating the game stops the music. I'm testing this with WinQuake.

Please forgive me if this is common knowledge, but I didn't see it mentioned. In Win98SE:

Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Multimedia -> CD Music Tab

There, you can select which drive (inluding Daemon Tools v3.47 virtual drives) you want to play music by default. This sometimes works for disc images. Of course, as has already been mentioned, you could always just set a virtual drive to D: as well.

For me this seems to be two programs competing for the sound output. If I make the game inactive I get redbook audio but lose sound effects and vice versa.
I'm gonna grab a new card, maybe Live! and check if that'll work better. This isn't just Daemon Tools as I tried with Alcohol 52% too.

maybe you're right, I remember being able to run the game with audiotracks+sound effects.

*edit*
why don't you try with _inmm?

Hi everyone,

I battled with this for a few days and finally found a "solution".

My setup:

I have an ISA SB16 (with VXD drivers), Win98 and Alcohol 120%. I have working DOS drivers and a SET BLASTER line in my AUTOEXEC which is also loaded while booting Win98. CDDA and game audio worked fine if I ran a DOS game using a CD, but CDDA didn't play at all (and gameplay suffered major slowdowns) while running from an emulated drive. My test games were QUAKE and Worms United.

After spending days on this, I discovered installing an ADDITIONAL PCI soundcard with WDM drivers (in my case an SBLIVE 5.1) and setting it as the default audio device in the Control Panel multimedia settings caused the emulated CDDA to spring into life. This also solved all of my DOS slowdown problems. It looks like the CD-Audio emulation requires WDM to work correctly (at least in my case).

Even though the SBLIVE is set as the default audio device, DOS sound comes out of the SB16 (most likely due to the SET BLASTER settings in my AUTOEXEC.BAT). However, CDDA is played via the WDM drivers and comes out of the SBLIVE. Since I only have one set of speakers, I ran the line-out of the SBLIVE to the line-in of the SB16 and unmuted the SB16-line-in port in the Win98 volume settings.... and everything is working PERFECTLY! I can live with the extra SB-Card if it lets me play my games without swapping CDs all the time! 😀

I hope this helps someone. I lost about 30 hours of my life configuring this damn thing!

Dave